Tourists have started streaming into the Maasai Mara game reserve to witness the annual wildebeest migration.
Close
to 100 American tourists checked in at the Sarova Hotel this week
although the migration of thousands of wildebeests from the Serengeti
National Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya is expected at the
end of the month.
Last month, the US was among
countries that issued travel advisories warning their citizens against
travelling to some parts of the country, particularly Nairobi and
Mombasa due to fears of grenade attacks. The others were France,
Australia and Britain.
Nakuru Governor Kinuthia Mbugua
Sunday met British tourists and thanked them for visiting the country
despite the advisory which led some UK tour firms to evacuate 500 of
their patrons from Coast hotels last month.
“If we hide
ourselves in our homes and stop going about our businesses, then we
will have allowed terrorists to intimidate us because their aim is to
destabilise our economies,” he said in Nakuru town.
In
the Maasai Mara, Mr Elias Kagwina, the coordinator of Mission Tour and
Travel said more tourists would be coming over for the peak season.
The
Sarova Mara Game Camp manager, Mr Antony Kashero, said hotels have been
experiencing difficult times during the low season which was compounded
by the travel advisories due to grenade attacks in Mombasa and Nairobi.
Global problem
“Despite
it being low season, we feel the effect the advisory had on the sector
and we hope this would not be the case when we usher in the peak
season,” he said.
Mr Joshua Stokrocki, from New Jersey,
and his relative Kyle Miller from North Carolina, said terrorism was a
global problem and that tourists were likely to ignore the travel
advisory by their governments.
“I am sure not
everywhere in Kenya is dangerous,” said Mr Stokrocki. Although most of
the hotels in the game reserve are operating below 50 per cent bed
occupancy, the steady arrival of tourists was a positive sign, said Mr
Kashero.
Last year, majority of tourists who visited
the Mara during the peak season were from China, the first time Asian
visitors had outnumbered their European counterparts.
The
Narok County executive in charge of Tourism, Mr Allan Twala, said over
40,000 Chinese tourists visited the Mara in 2011, an increase of about
10 per cent from the previous year. This he said, was more than arrivals
from traditional markets in Europe and America.
According
to the Kenya Tourism Board, the number of Chinese visitors to Kenya
increased by four per cent in the 2013-2014 period, making the Asian
country one of the top 10 tourist source markets. KTB has predicted that
this figure will rise to 100,000 this year.
Speaking
during a tour of the Maasai Mara recently, Tourism Cabinet Secretary
Phyllis Kandie said Kenya was targeting three million tourists by next
year.
In Nakuru town, Mr Mbugua Sunday told tourists
from Derby, England, that terrorism had no boundaries. “We should not
change the way we operate and give terrorists the satisfaction that they
have conquered the world. We should instead make them feel that they
have no effect,” he said.
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